Organization Mission

The A4A Coalition works for equitable access to arts education for all students across Washington State. 

Areas of Expertise

    • Systemic challenges in arts education equity statewide 
    • Accessible, public-facing data dashboard tracking arts education in WA 
    • Customized toolkits for educators to provide students with quality arts education addressing that community’s unique access needs and priorities 

Current Top Priorities for Guidance or Collaboration

Contact us to learn more about these current priority areas or to explore collaboration opportunities.
    • Administer, collect, analyze, and report on Washington State of the Arts Education Survey 2025 (March) 
        • Understand areas of greatest need, as well as areas of high achievement, which will inform the data and enable the development of tools and resources to strengthen student learning in the arts 
    • Perform data dashboard summary and reporting 
        • Tracking outcomes:  
            • Student Access to the Arts 
            • Student Participation in the Arts
            • Culturally Responsive Arts Education  
    • WA state GDP from the Creative Sector  
    • Career Connected Learning 
    • Arts Integration  
    • Update the Quadrant Washington Arts in Education Data Project Metrics to include 22-23 and 24-25 school year data 
    • Update Arts for All Website: Page-by-Page Copy, Photos; Wireframes (April) 
    • Develop toolkits:  
        • Coalition Orientation Packet (April) 
        • Coalition Outreach Toolkit (May – June) 
        • Champions Advocacy Toolkit (July – August) 
    • Create presentation decks to support data dashboard coordination during planned Arts for All meetings in April, July, October. 

Geographical Areas Served:

Northwest, Rural/Remote, Suburban/Exurban, Urban, West Coast,

Primary Audience Served:

Children (0-15), Community Members, School Administrators, Teaching Artists, Youth (15-24),

Artistic Discipline:

Arts and crafts, Dance, Folk/traditional/indigenous arts, Media Arts, Music, Theatre, Visual Arts,

Title: 2280 Pasos Bajo un Cielo Nublado | Artist: Hernán Jourdan | Medium: Film

When I was asked to create a work of art exploring literacy, I wanted to create a dance but I had no dancers or a studio, so I chose to use my own body in the space I had, my yard. Fluent Nature is video of micro-choreography that explores what cannot be expressed with words, how nature has its own language, and how placing the human body in nature changes the story.

Title: What Is Me and What Is Not Me | Artist: Alex Chadwell | Medium: Music

My thinking on arts and literacy centers around the concept of literacies and artmaking as both sense-making and meaning-making processes that organically and inevitably overlap, intersect, and reciprocate. Compositionally, What is me and what is not me is a sound collage of sorts (there is no notation for the piece, and I'd be hard pressed to recreate it accurately) that abstractly and aurally represents the relationships between literacies and artmaking.

Title: A Curious Honeybee | Artist: Gideon Young | Medium: Film

Offering welcome through traditional and digital elements of literacy, A Curious Honeybee provides an experiential learning environment by activating visual, musical, natural, and emotional literacies.

Title: Tercera Llamada | Artist: Karilú Forshee | Medium: Audio

La Carpa Theatre is a project that I am currently directing in the Detroit Latinx community. The project aims to strengthen and uplift youth voices through devised theatre, in the style of the Mexican Carpas. This audio was created in the theatrical environment envisioned for our project. The ways in which literacies are re-defined are at the heart of La Carpa Theatre's mission.

Title: Literaseas | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite and ink on paper with digital edits

Title: A Riddle | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits

Title: False Binaries | Artist: MJ Robinson | Medium: Graphite on paper with digital edits